Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies

United Kingdom

1987

14 Min

Black and White

English

Currently 3.9/5 Stars.
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DIR Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay

PROD DES Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay

ANIM Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay

Melbourne (Animation), Melbourne (Robotica), Melbourne (Cabinet of Dreams: The Brothers Quay)

Synopsis

When the Quays secured funding for Street of Crocodiles (1986), it was on condition that it was based on a recognised literary source. No such restrictions were imposed on their next film, Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies (1987), and the result may well be their most baffling work – at least on a first viewing.

The starting point was a piece of music that Leszek Jankowski had written for a Kafka-themed project that never got off the ground. From this, they devised a choreographic plan involving certain precisely calibrated camera movements, and built a set with these in mind. They also came up with a visual conception based on black lines, traced by a calligrapher’s pen in the opening shot, but also appearing as barcodes, striped sheets and wallpaper (in an interview with the art historian Nick Wadley, the Quays described their film as “a private documentary on the straight line, that bleeds and runs and is softened by the focus”). The camera movements are also designed to reveal tiny, initially almost imperceptible elements in the décor, hidden spaces that can only be seen from certain angles and which vanish as quickly as they appear.

The thematic content was initially sourced from Le Verrou, an ambiguous painting (and subsequent engraving) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) which depicts a man reaching for the lock of a door and a woman lying on a bed – and to this they added elements taken from the work of the artist’s cousin, the anatomist Honoré Fragonard (1732-1799), whose disturbing yet fascinating ‘écorchés’ preserved flayed human and animal corpses in poses designed to reveal cross-sections of their interior structure.

Whatever the challenges of interpretation, there is little doubt that this is one of the Quays’ most visually striking creations. The first of their films to be shot in pure black and white, they make brilliant use of the contrast between the white ‘exteriors’ and the central room, where the black lines ultimately converge. It’s also the first Quay film to make extensive use of exceptionally narrow depth of field, with the slow focus pulls as much a part of the overall choreographic texture as the movement of the camera and puppets. And for all the tantalising lack of coherent ‘meaning’, there’s something inexplicably melancholic about the protagonists, reduced to empty, repetitive gestures and, in one case, to an anatomical structure so basic that it’s barely life-supporting. —Michael Brooke, BFI Screenonline

Director

Stephen Quay

The Quay brothers are identical twin brothers born outside Philadelphia, in Norristown, Pennsylvania. They studied Film and Illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art {1965-1969} followed by a Masters Degree in London at the Royal College of Art {1969-1972} where they continued their studies in Illustration and Film, particularly the latter, where they made three short animation films. Returning to America they attempted to make a living from free-lance book illustration out of New York, though economically times were difficult. In terms of their work, there was an increasing frustration with the two-dimensional graphic realm of drawing and little by little they gravitated towards wanting to create in miniature (in the manner of Joseph Cornell’s boxes) powerful three-dimensional realms, using puppets and objects through the medium of film animation. In 1978 they received a National Endowment Grant for the Arts. They travelled throughout England, Belgium and Holland researching… read more

The Quay brothers are identical twin brothers born outside Philadelphia, in Norristown, Pennsylvania. They studied Film and Illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art {1965-1969} followed by a Masters Degree in London at the Royal College of Art {1969-1972} where they continued their studies in Illustration and Film, particularly the latter, where they made three short animation films. Returning to America they attempted to make a living from free-lance book illustration out of New York, though economically times were difficult. In terms of their work, there was an increasing frustration with the two-dimensional graphic realm of drawing and little by little they gravitated towards wanting to create in miniature (in the manner of Joseph Cornell’s boxes) powerful three-dimensional realms, using puppets and objects through the medium of film animation. In 1978 they received a National Endowment Grant for the Arts. They travelled throughout England, Belgium and Holland researching and looking at the craft of puppetry. Whilst in London a former colleague from the Royal College of Art, Keith Griffiths was working as Deputy Head of Production for the British Film Institute Production Board, and suggested that they make an application for ‘‘experimental’’ film funding. They promptly drafted a scenario for a short puppet animation film and then left for Holland. Some months later they received a telegram saying that they had been awarded the B.F.I. grant.

They returned to London and “a little like James Joyce who, upon his arrival in Paris planned on staying for only two weeks and instead remained 25 years. In our case, we had planned on staying a mere 9 months in order to execute the film but similarly have ended up staying some 25 years as well. Our first film lead to a second film, then a third and a fourth, etc”. By this time they had formed a small company “KONINCK” together with producer Keith Griffiths and over the past 24 years have made a hybrid variety of puppet animation films: Documentaries (Punch and Judy, Stravinsky & Janacek, The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer, Anamorphosis, The Phantom Museum); Interludes & Stings (BBC, MTV); Commercials (for Englandand America); as well as Fiction Films inspired by the writings of Kafka, Bruno Schulz (Street of Crocodiles), Robert
Walser (The Comb, Institute Benjamenta – a live-action feature film). Recently, for Channel Four they have directed as part of a dance series called “Choreographers and Filmmakers” Duet – an 18 min. ballet by Will Tuckett from the Royal Ballet. For the BBC as part of its Sound and Image series they collaborated with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen who wrote the music for their film In Absentia. They did a further collaboration with the choreographer Will Tuckett, a 40 min. film based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman.

Apart from the films, their work also includes designing the scenography for Theatre, Opera and Ballet productions both in London and Europe. —Celluloid Dreams

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Timothy Quay

Stephen and Timothy Quay (born June 17, 1947 in Norristown, Pennsylvania) are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators. They are the recipients of the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for their work on the play The Chairs.

They reside and work in England, having moved there in 1969 to study at the Royal College of Art, London after studying illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In England they made their first short films, which no longer exist after the only print was irreparably damaged.[citation needed] They spent some time in the Netherlands in the 1970s and then returned to England where they teamed up with another Royal College student, Keith Griffiths, who produced all of their films. The trio formed Koninck Studios in 1980, which is currently based in Southwark, south London.

The Quays’ works (1979-present… read more

Stephen and Timothy Quay (born June 17, 1947 in Norristown, Pennsylvania) are American identical twin brothers better known as the Brothers Quay or Quay Brothers. They are influential stop-motion animators. They are the recipients of the 1998 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design for their work on the play The Chairs.

They reside and work in England, having moved there in 1969 to study at the Royal College of Art, London after studying illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. In England they made their first short films, which no longer exist after the only print was irreparably damaged.[citation needed] They spent some time in the Netherlands in the 1970s and then returned to England where they teamed up with another Royal College student, Keith Griffiths, who produced all of their films. The trio formed Koninck Studios in 1980, which is currently based in Southwark, south London.

The Quays’ works (1979-present) show a wide range of often esoteric influences, starting with the Polish animators Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica and continuing with the writers Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser and Michel de Ghelderode, puppeteers Wladyslaw Starewicz and Richard Teschner and composers Leoš Janáček, Zdeněk Liška and Leszek Jankowski, the last of whom has created many original scores for their work. Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, for whom they named one of their films (The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer), is also frequently cited as a major influence, but they actually discovered his work relatively late, in 1983, by which time their characteristic style and preoccupations had been fully formed.²

Most of their films feature dolls, often partially disassembled, in a dark, moody atmosphere. Perhaps their best known work is Street of Crocodiles, based on the short novel of the same name by the Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz. This short film was selected by director and animator Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time, and critic Jonathan Romney included it on his list of the ten best films in any medium (for Sight and Sound’s 2002 critics’ poll). They have made two feature-length live action films: Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life and The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes. They also directed an animated sequence in the film Frida.

With very few exceptions, their films have no meaningful spoken dialogue—most have no spoken content at all, while some, like The Comb (1990) include multilingual background gibberish that is not supposed to be coherently understood. Accordingly, their films are highly reliant on their music scores, many of which have been written especially for them by the Polish composer Leszek Jankowski. In 2000, they contributed a short film to the BBC’s Sound On Film series in which they visualised a 20-minute piece by the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Whenever possible, the Quays prefer to work with pre-recorded music, though Gary Tarn’s score for The Phantom Museum had to be added afterwards when it proved impossible to licence music by the Czech composer Zdeněk Liška.

They have created music videos for His Name Is Alive (“Are We Still Married”, “Can’t Go Wrong Without You”), Michael Penn (“Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)”) and 16 Horsepower (“Black Soul Choir”). Some people mistakenly believe that the Quays are responsible for several music videos for Tool, but those videos were created by Fred Stuhr and member Adam Jones, whose work is influenced by the Quays. Although they worked on Peter Gabriel’s seminal video “Sledgehammer” (1986) as animators, this was directed by Stephen R. Johnson and the Quays were unhappy with their contribution, believing it to be more imitative of Švankmajer’s work than truly distinctive in its own right.

Their work also includes decors for the Theatre and Opera productions of director Richard Jones: Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges; Feydeau’s “A Flea in Her Ear”; Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa; and Molière’s “Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.”. Their set design for a revival of Ionesco’s “The Chairs” was nominated for a Tony Award in 1998.

Before turning to film, they worked as professional illustrators. The first edition of Anthony Burgess’ novel “The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby’s End”, features their drawings before the start of each chapter. Nearly three decades before directly collaborating with Stockhausen, they designed the cover of the book Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (ed. Jonathan Cott, Simon & Schuster, 1973). —Wikipedia

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